"How is that possible? Senior Chen is a Soul Emperor. How could he lose to a Four-Ring Soul Ancestor?"
"She must have cheated."
"Exactly, we have to report her. She definitely cheated!"
In the stands, a group of young men and women from Shrek Academy flushed red.
"Snow Girl, ignore them. Let's get out of here."
After glancing at Snow Girl's heaving chest and hearing the voices around them, Huo Yuhao compressed his voice into a thread and spoke to her.
"Fine, I'll listen to you. Getting to teach that bully a lesson made this outing worthwhile. It's just a shame I couldn't take out that bunch from the Dai Family for you that day, too." Snow Girl planted her hands on her hips with a haughty air.
"Let's not talk about that. Let's go." Now that Snow Girl had fulfilled her wish of defeating Shrek's strongest openly acknowledged fighter, Huo Yuhao felt a sense of release as he sat in the stands.
Although his arrangements over the past few days had made Sun Moon temporarily safe for him, Huo Yuhao knew that safety was only temporary.
Huo Yuhao was different in this life from his previous one. He knew that the Douluo Continent at this point was practically Tang San's domain. Within that domain, even if Tang San faced many restrictions, those who refused to submit to the Tang Family were always walking a tightrope over a cliff.
On the way back to the Mingyue Hotel, Huo Yuhao had a bad premonition. Sure enough, as he approached his lodgings, he saw from afar that the hotel the Ordinary Alliance had operated for so many years had already been reduced to rubble.
"Everything's been turned upside down in just half a day? Things really are moving fast." Watching the Mingdu garrison fighting Evil Soul Masters, Snow Girl murmured to herself.
How ruthless. And how fast! Huo Yuhao gazed coldly up at the sky.
"Yuhao, where are we staying tonight?" Snow Girl looked from the rubble strewn ahead of them to Huo Yuhao. Though she had lived for hundreds of thousands of years, she had discovered that when trouble arose, this young boy was often the one she relied on.
Where would they stay? Certainly not at the Qingsе Hotel run by the Xishui Alliance.
Even without the [Audience] authority, the memories of his previous life told Huo Yuhao that the Qingse Hotel and the Xishui Alliance were fronts for the Holy Spirit Cult.
In his previous life, when his good, [pure as ice and spotless as jade] Father-in-law had reincarnated to search for his wife, and the Supreme Gods of the Great God Realm had recreated their own eras through the game [Douluo World], Huo Yuhao had done considerable research into Ye Xishui, a woman from his own era.
In the Mingdu of his era, if a Soul Master's Martial Soul was neither neutral nor of a positive attribute, joining the Ordinary Alliance was their only way out. Yet Shangguan Wei'er's Ordinary Alliance was as ordinary as its name suggested: it had no abundant resources whatsoever.
Thus, in Mingdu, Soul Masters with positive attributes, such as the Light Attribute, either stumbled into the Xishui Alliance and were killed, or joined the Ordinary Alliance to sell themselves.
If I'd thought one layer deeper back then, that incident during the Twin God Star Plan would never have happened. What a pity. Back then, I was still that dog, Huo Yuhao. When I reflected on my own era, I actually treated this whole arrangement in Mingdu as nothing more than fate's trial for Ye Guyi.
"Come stay at the Sun Moon Royal Soul Engineer Academy with me. We should be treated quite well there." As Huo Yuhao spoke to Snow Girl, he took her hand and headed toward the Sun Moon Royal Soul Engineer Academy.
Huo Yuhao also happened to be due to deliver a batch of Soul Tool Armor to Xuan Ziwen that day.
Laboratory Three, Sun Moon Royal Soul Engineer Academy.
When Xuan Ziwen saw Huo Yuhao take a pile of lightweight, defensive Class 6 and Class 7 armor out of his storage soul tool, his eyes immediately lit up.
He knew what this meant.
While the Four Douluo Kingdoms still treated Soul Emperors as something special, combat power on the level of a six-ring Soul Master was gradually becoming the standard combat power of individual units in the Sun Moon Empire.
In this era, the importance of such a development went without saying.
As a commoner who had emigrated from the Heaven Dou Empire to Sun Moon, Xuan Ziwen felt that his journey across space had almost coincided with a journey through time: Sun Moon and the nations of Douluo were practically two different planes.
"Teacher, do you know about the Evil Soul Masters?" Huo Yuhao asked tentatively.
In his previous life, after Tang Wutong had devoured Wang Qiu'er, he, as Huo Yuhao, had been busy practicing the Haodong Three Wonders and had stopped pursuing many matters. In this life, he would settle every one of those accounts.
"Are you asking about Evil Soul Masters? Since I came to Sun Moon, I've seen far less intense Evil Soul Master activity among ordinary people. But they're more brazen here among Soul Masters and nobles. After all, this is their home base." Xuan Ziwen spoke bluntly.
"Teacher, do you take an open-minded view of Evil Soul Masters?"
"Open-minded? How could I? I only moved here after Evil Soul Masters massacred the village where I grew up."
Only after discussing Evil Soul Masters with Xuan Ziwen did Huo Yuhao realize that this teacher had an exceptionally keen nose for the political situation.
No wonder even Ju Zi, the Crown Prince's consort, could "just happen" to be his student.
Of course, after this exchange, Huo Yuhao could actually tell that people on the Douluo Continent from commoner backgrounds, like Xuan Ziwen, had long suffered under Tang.
After all, these people were no fools. They could still compare what had happened on the Douluo Continent before and after Slaughter City disappeared.
It was just that, faced with an absolute disparity in brute force, they could only express that rejection in twisted ways.
"Sister Guyi, thank you for trusting me so much." After settling into the dormitory Xuan Ziwen had arranged for him, Huo Yuhao closed the door and immediately opened the Undead Demiplane to check on Ye Guyi.
Once he confirmed that Ye Guyi had suffered only superficial injuries, Huo Yuhao gave her some Life Crystals to use.
Even though he knew the incident at the Mingyue Hotel had been aimed at Ye Guyi, Huo Yuhao still reassured her and told her not to worry.
As for why Ye Guyi had faced this deadly calamity, perhaps it was because she had told him something she should not have.
"Little Yuhao, I should be thanking you. Without the Magic Array you secretly left behind, I wouldn't be here to see you now."
"Sister Guyi, can you tell me what happened?" Huo Yuhao asked.
"After you left for the competition this morning..."
Listening to Ye Guyi's account, Huo Yuhao learned that an Evil Soul Master at the level of a Nine Rings Titled Douluo had apparently sensed the divine aura at the Mingyue Hotel.
Of course, that was merely what Ye Guyi believed.
Now both suspicious and meticulous, Huo Yuhao naturally did not believe that some Evil Soul Master had detected a faint trace of divine aura.
Thanks to his guidance and the constant monitoring of his divine sense, Huo Yuhao could be certain that, ever since the day he arrived in Sun Moon and met her, Ye Guyi had never exposed any opening that could draw an Evil Soul Master at the level of a Nine Rings Titled Douluo.
Therefore, the Nine Rings Titled Douluo leading the Evil Soul Masters who had suddenly stormed into the Mingyue Hotel that day had clearly acted on some sort of "flash of inspiration."
Having learned in his previous life how the gods of the Divine Realm could toy with people whenever they could get away with breaking the rules, Huo Yuhao naturally knew who had done this.
"Sister Guyi, you said that man claimed to have received a revelation from some Holy Emperor?" Huo Yuhao caught the crucial detail in Ye Guyi's words. "Has your Angel Clan ever heard any legends about this so-called Holy Emperor?"
Before you continue